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20 May 2006 09:41 am
Christanism and Sex
A reader makes a good point:
You observe with regard to Tim Graham's remarks at NRO that "it's stigmatization that these people are so adamant about." That's spot on and it got me thinking. Why so adamantly oppose abortion, but also convenient access to birth control and sex education, or oppose the HPV vaccine? Because they allow people to "sin" without bearing the stigmatizable (if that's a word) results of that sin.
From ancient times until now, abortion wasn't condemned because it was the destruction of "human life," but because it allowed women to conceal the result of an illicit affair. Similarly, the pill and HPV vaccine prevent society and medicine from stigmatizing sinful women's bodies as the proper punishment for their behavior. Allowing gays full civil rights, or teaching tolerance of homosexuality, removes from their lives the stigma they deserve to live with as a result of sin. What Christianists (as well as their Islamist brethren) fear most is a world where any expression of sexuality outside the confines of a procreative marriage goes unpunished and women's sexuality in particular slips out of the control of religious patriarchy. Imagine a world where sexual pleasure were possible with no risk of pregnancy or STD, or even in the case of gays, occurs entirely from outside a procreative framework. Modern medicine makes it possible and it's the Christianists' worst nightmare.
Hence the growing realization that they have to stop contraception.
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Tracked: May 20, 2006 12:34:02 PM
